Television viewers are presently able to access hundreds of channels providing a multitude of programs, only a small fraction of which will be of interest to a given viewer. To assist the viewer in determining programs of interest, current commercially available reception devices such as televisions, analog cable receivers, and digital cable and satellite receivers typically provide a program guide function that allows the viewer to access a grid showing programs that will be available on various channels in upcoming time slots. Brief descriptions of programs may also be accessible. Such receivers may also allow the user to search for programs in basic categories such as news, sports, movies, etc.
Current commercially available television recording technology also provides similar tools. The present generation of digital video recording machines, which typically store video on a bulk storage device such as a hard disk drive, allow users to select programs for recording using an on screen program guide that provides key word searching of program titles, a program time grid, and basic program categorization.
Although these devices provide tools that improve over devices of earlier generations, most conventional tools still require viewers to examine all upcoming programs to identify programs of interest. Thus, developers of the next generation of devices are focused on providing intelligence in receiving and recording devices for identifying programs of interest on behalf of the user. A number of U.S. patents describe different approaches to this problem.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,223,924 describes a device that downloads program descriptions. The program descriptions are viewed individually by a user, who indicates whether he is interested in each program. Based on the user's input, the device builds a database of key words associated with the user's positive and negative preferences. This database is then used to identify upcoming programs that may be of interest to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,344 describes a device that stores a viewer preference file that reflects the viewer's positive and negative preferences concerning various program attributes. The device uses the preference file to analyze content codes that describe attributes of available programs, and presents a program to the user based on the analysis. Programs are ranked using a neural network thresholding method.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,434,678 and its related patents describe a video retrieval system in which individual portions of scenes within a video are rated in accordance with a rating system and a version of the video is presented by selecting the segments that are acceptable based on a user's content preferences. Similar technology is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,717,814 and its related patents.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,999 describes a device that tracks the viewing habits of a user and builds a weekly viewing trend. The device notifies the viewer when the television is tuned to different channel in conflict with the viewing trend.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,534,911 describes a system in which a viewer builds a personal profile that is then used to analyze data describing available programs. Programs are selected based on the analysis and are made available on a personalized virtual channel. The viewer is also enabled to select from among programs that are ranked in accordance with the profile. The specific manner in which program analysis is performed is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,585,865 describes a system that searches for a genre code in broadcast signals in accordance with a specified program genre. If more than one signal contains the desired genre code, the system displays the channel with the greatest display history.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,61 9,247 describes a video recording device that selects programs for storage based on predefined user preferences, and allows a user to view the stored programs on a pay-per-view basis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,767,893 describes a system that uses content based filtering for identifying video programs to be stored. The specific manner in which content is filtered is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,878,222 describes a system that monitors channel data describing contents of available channels and arbitrates access to display or storage resources based on a user profile.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,945,988 describes a system that monitors the programs viewed by a current viewer and determines the identity of the current viewer using stored viewer profiles. The system may then use the viewer profile to analyze metadata describing upcoming programs to identify programs for viewing or recording. The specific manner in which the metadata analysis is performed is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,722 describes a system in which a user profile is compared to program content profiles to generate an agreement matrix for each program. The agreement matrixes are used to select a program for presentation to the viewer. Agreement matrixes may also be generated at a server end using profiles for multiple viewers to select programs to be made available from the server.